


Deadline

by WritingToKeepMySanity



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Jack taking care of Kath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-01-31 14:46:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12684018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingToKeepMySanity/pseuds/WritingToKeepMySanity
Summary: Prompt: "I'm a writer and, when it gets too close to my deadline, I neglect to take care of myself so you'll pop by my house every so often to make sure I'm doing okay"Katherine won’t take a break and her husband won’t stand for it.





	Deadline

Unsurprisingly, when Jack pushed open the door to their apartment, he was greeted by the sound of clacking typewriter keys and his wife’s muttering.

Since coming home from their honeymoon, Katherine had been churning out article after article, trying to appease her new editor. After the strike ended, Pulitzer lifted the blacklist on her, and the papers had been fighting for her ever since. She stayed with the _Sun_ , under the condition she didn’t go back to the entertainment beat. But in the last year, the paper changed hands, and the new editor was all too willing to put his male writers on the hard-hitting news, and Katherine back on entertainment. Especially after the wedding.

(Suddenly, being "Mrs. Katherine Kelly" somehow made her less credible, even though his wife still wrote under "Katherine Plumber")

So she’d been working double time to prove herself. And Jack was starting to worry.

He dropped his artists bag by the door, kicking off his boots next to it, lining them up neatly against the wall, before hanging up his coat and hat on the coatrack. "Ace? I'm home." He heard a half-hearted grunt from the general direction of the living room, and followed it, the clacking and muttering growing louder and louder. 

She was hunched over her typewriter, her back to him. Crumpled papers littered her desk and the floor around her chair. It was late, and she'd clearly been at it for a while.  

Jack walked up behind her, laying a hand on her shoulder, and kissing the top of her head, causing her to startle.

“Jack!” Katherine rubbed her eyes, squinting at him. “How long have you been home?”

“Just got here." Jack admitted, rubbing her shoulder soothingly. "How’s the article?”

She groaned, tipping her head back so it rested on his stomach. Jack brought a hand up to cup the side of her neck, brushing his thumb across the nape of her neck. "He hates everything I give him, Jack. Nothing's good enough." 

"He's just a jerk, Kath. We've faced worse than 'im."

Katherine was shaking her head before he finished talking. "But none of them held my future in their hands."

Squatting next to her chair, Jack tried to chose his next words carefully. "I hate to remind ya, sweetheart, but your father did blacklist ya durin' the strike."

Rolling her neck down to give him a dry look, Katherine said, "You know what I mean, Jack. My editor refuses to publish anything I give him, and I... I just don't know what to do anymore."  She dropped her head in her hands with a defeated groan.

Jack sat back and studied his wife. Her auburn hair was tousled from running her hands through it, ink stained her hands and her dress, and there were deep, dark circles under her eyes. Jack hadn’t seen her this tired since Blackwell. And that was sayin’ something, since she’d been beaten, drugged, and wound up with pneumonia afterwards.

"Katherine." She didn't look at him. "Ace. Come to bed.”

Katherine shrugged him off. “No, Jack. I have to rewrite this paragraph."

“It’s perfect, Katherine. Now get some rest, come back to it tomorrow.” She didn’t budge, but she dropped her hands on the desk. He almost had her. “It’ll still be here in the morning.”

Katherine groaned, dropping her head in her hands. “Okay. Okay, I’ll go to bed.”

“Atta girl.”

After he got her in bed with him, Katherine curled into him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Thank you. For taking care of me.”

Jack settled a hand on her hip, kissed her forehead. “Don’t mention it, Ace.”

The next morning, Katherine woke to a hot breakfast, coffee, a clean desk, free of papers and spilled ink, and a note that read _You're better than all those bums, Ace (at least drink your coffee before you go back to work) -J_

She smiled. Her husband was the best.  

**Author's Note:**

> I have about 5,000 deadlines before I'm done for the semester. So, I thought of this little drabble, and wrote it. Instead of meeting one single deadline. Wait. Lie. I did meet one deadline. I'm so productive, y'all. 
> 
> Comments, concerns, and critiques welcome.
> 
> Peace, love, and sanity!


End file.
